The Guardian: Visited by revelation

Lila: '“A question is more spacious than a statement,” she once wrote, “far better suited to expressing wonder.” Her questioning books express wonder: they are enlightening, in the best sense, passionately contesting our facile, recycled understanding of ourselves and of our world. The one thing Robinson can be counted on to resist is received wisdom. At the end of an essay called “Psalm Eight”, she wrote that we all “exist in relation to experience, if we attend to it and if its plainness does not disguise it from us, as if we were visited by revelation”.' Sarah Churchwell on Marilynne Robinson.

Stations of the Cross: 'The inexpressibly painful story of Maria (Lea van Acken) is structured in an ingenious parallel with the stations of the cross (that is, the traditional scenes associated with Christ carrying his cross to the crucifixion) and filmed in mostly static tableaux, beginning with a confirmation class whose composition recalls depictions of the last supper.' Review by Peter Bradshaw.

The Documentary: Sister Aimee: 'McPherson founded her own church in 1923, which was “built more like a theatre with an orchestra pit at the front,” according to biographer Matthew Sutton. She would take to the stage and enact Bible stories which had the production values of a Broadway musical.' Review by Priya Elan.

P. D. James: 'Her books always contained at least one religious character, a sign of her devotion to Anglicanism. This gave way to much discussion in her stories about the nature of good and evil, with Dalgliesh, the son of a vicar, often leading the way.' Obituary.

Gist Is: 'Harry was raised a Christian, and came out aged 19. Friends and family were supportive; reaction from the broader church community was mixed. “I was leading a youth group, and I was asked not to carry on there.” He laughs, hollowly. “Still got my back up about it.” Attempting to clear the air, he and Tim met with group leaders, assuming responsible adults could be reasoned with. “But they were really horrible. You found some people held on to scripture so tightly, because that was what they built everything on. But then there were others, just as devout, who were almost excited by vagueness. They weren’t tied to the letters, the lines, but the sentiment. Their support was invaluable to me.”' Interview with Adult Jazz.

William Blake: '... I discovered what I believed in. My mind and my body reacted to certain lines from the Songs of Innocence and of Experience, from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, from “Auguries of Innocence”, from Europe, from America with the joyful immediacy of a flame leaping to meet a gas jet. What these things meant I didn’t quite know then, and I’m not sure I fully know now. There was no sober period of reflection, consideration, comparison, analysis: I didn’t have to work anything out. I knew they were true in the way I knew that I was alive. I had stumbled into a country in which I was not a stranger, whose language I spoke by instinct, whose habits and customs fitted me like my own skin.' Philip Pullman on the poetry of Blake.

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Adult Jazz - Hum.